The right price for your next job in thirty seconds: based on your real working time and what you want to earn, checked against your market, ready to become a quote.
Your city and your experience shape your rates. You can change them anytime.
Cities and populations: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
No black box: three steps, the ones an accountant would walk you through.
A one-hour session is rarely one hour of work. The calculation adds culling and editing (based on the number of photos and the type of shoot) and preparation: emails, scouting, backups, delivery.
It starts from what you want to earn, which grows with experience: take-home pay and business costs, divided by the hours you can actually bill, after taxes. Only about half of your time goes directly to clients.
The price is adjusted to the size of your city, a little higher in a major metro, a little lower in a small town, then placed within the usual range for your country. Below it, you work for too little; above it, you need a positioning that justifies it.
Benchmarks based on public surveys and price data from 2024–2026 (The Knot, Bridebook, Mariages.net, marketplace platforms, official mileage rates). Outside France, ranges are estimated from local price levels: adjust them to what you see in your own market. Cities and populations: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Outside the covered countries, amounts are converted at purchasing power parity (World Bank, CC BY 4.0), with no market range.
Count your total time, not just the session: for a one-hour portrait, preparation, culling and editing often bring the work to three and a half hours. Multiply that time by your hourly rate, add expenses (travel, studio, prints), then compare with your local market. In the US, a one-hour portrait session typically runs $130–400 and a full wedding day $2,000–4,000; The Knot puts the average wedding photography spend around $3,000.
Add up, over a year, the take-home pay you want and your business costs, divide by (1 − your tax and contribution rate), then by the hours you can actually bill. Expect only about half of your working time to go directly to clients. Example: $4,000 take-home and $1,000 of costs per month, 28% set aside for taxes, 40 hours a week over 44 weeks give about $95 an hour.
Yes. Most photographers include an area around their base, often 20 to 30 miles, then charge the distance beyond it, round trip. Official mileage rates are a good reference: the IRS standard mileage rate in the US, 45p a mile in the UK.
Licensing is priced on usage: where the images appear, for how long, in which territory and whether the license is exclusive. Small local clients usually get limited usage included in the session fee; marketing or advertising use justifies a separate line on the quote, higher as the distribution gets wider, longer or exclusive.
It depends on where you work. In the UK, you must register for VAT once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 over 12 months. In the US, sales tax on photography depends on your state and on whether you deliver prints or digital files. Most EU countries offer a small-business VAT exemption, which must then be stated on quotes and invoices.
Quotes accepted online, deposit invoices, contracts, then the delivery gallery: Pelli brings together everything that follows the right price.
